Wednesday, May 11, 2016

You build walls for protection when you fear the pain. Over time,
you build more walls, thicker, higher, sometimes in layers that must
be penetrated one after another before they can get to you. Inside
the walls you can survive. Survive is good, but once inside the walls
you cannot see the outside of the walls, and thus you miss that out
there that is not about the pain but instead is the good. Eventually
you may forget there is an outside.

Often a client asks, as you gather around the table with its dog
or cat lying still and quiet upon it, but no longer in pain and
despair, thanks to your needle and skill......"Doc, I don't know
how you do this...." And their voice hangs in the air, dripping
a bit on your shoulder and bowed head.....

You tell them that this is one of the most important things you
can do, for when all else is done, you can grant a quiet exit for a
dear friend, so that is what you do. And they thank you through their
tears and you hug and then they leave so that you can wrap up a limp
body in plastic and place it carefully in a freezer. And the pain
settles in there, and you promise yourself that it will be ok, and it
is not, and so you build another wall.

That spot inside your right cheek, the one you chew on when you
really need to rip some asshole's head off and you cannot, and you
watch them take the abused neglected animal away to where you cannot
force them to let you help, and you know they will let it rot, and
you say to yourself....forget it. It's not your problem anymore. Get
on with things.

And the pain settle in there, and you build another wall.

Soon enough you are so changed that you cannot see yourself
without walls, and you cannot see outside the walls, and those you
love cannot see you within.

And then somebody puts this silly thing up on your feed, and they
force you to watch it even though you fear it, and it works. It finds
a way through all the walls, and it feels for and then hits that
place deep in your heart, and you feel the walls fall away leaving
you completely exposed and defenseless. Perhaps the tears flow...

You wonder for a moment why this one gets to you, and then in the
mirror you see..... This is why you do this thing, for them and
despite what it does to your self. But you have to drop the walls
before you can even remember why. It takes a silly thing like this to
drop the walls.

Things

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